


Caligula's Night Gig

by Mamcine_Oxfeather



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: M/M, fraaaaaandship, just kidding no they don't, march and healy discuss things like adults
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-14 14:17:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7175342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamcine_Oxfeather/pseuds/Mamcine_Oxfeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Second official* case The Nice Guys take, doesn't end until their seventh.  Shutting the file on that solidifies a professional reputation and reveals a personal one; but Jackson Healy isn't sure the victory outweighs the risk, even for LA's newest approaching decade.</p><p>(*not including that thing with the 'professional dancer' and her cousin.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Southern California sprawled out from its beachfronts like a great aged dog on summer-warm linoleum, ribcage hills gone dusty under the wide gold ribbon of the setting sun.  Cities lit the coast in fits and starts, bunched up against the Pacific like a gather of sucklings, each with its own personality and measure of development; each graduating from the litter to sprawl its population across the bare linoleum, kicking up dustbunnies and leathered bits of dropped roast.  Each city to host its own litter of neighborhoods and districts, its own frenzied sprawl exuberant with struggle, this record store chewing on the ears of that hotel, this gas station shoving that convenience store aside for a go at the revenue teat.  The people in California played the same role as any dog-owner; grooming the streets, feeding the economies, cutting out the burrs and burning off the ticks.

'Dog groomer', Healy liked to joke, when the parents at the school parking queue wandered near enough to ask.  He sure as hell wasn't a walker or a feeder, no, nowadays he mostly eliminated fleas, pulled the bloodsuckers out and either let them drown in the wash of the criminal justice system, or squished them himself.

("I didn't think you even liked dogs," Holly had protested, only once.  "It was a cooler story when everybody thought I had a body guard."

"Kidnappers are less likely to shoot your dog-groomer," Healy had argued softly, and that had been the end of that.)

" _Daaad_ ," Holly's protest drawled through the popcorn-thick air.  The Pier had just lost its sunlight, bright now under the fireworks with moth-dotted booth neons and waxy orange streetlamp, faded color-bulbs blinking down the side of steel-beam rides and weathered plyboard booths.  People in bikini tops and sarongs or board shorts and flopsweat shuffled slowly along the Pier's Fair circuit, ambling in various states of drunk or sleepy or stoned, down the sawdust paths, arms full with children or lovers or stuffed prizes or swimming golden glints in colored cellophane bladders, frozen-chocolate-this and deep-fried-that.

Jackson Healy, leaning against a still-warm wooden fence rail for the ferris wheel, recognized that voice through the crowd and glanced up from his cigar to watch the small family traipse past unawares.  Holland March, single parent and seasoned Detective and doe-eyed nerd, did not walk beside his teenaged daughter so much as stumble ahead and/or behind her, 'scuse-me-sweetie each time a green tennis shoe was unlaced or unheeled by his nervous loafers.  In March's hand was a thin, bright piece of plastic twisted into a flower shape, what had been sold in a styrofoam cup of iced lemonade Holly now drank from without the hazard of the straw.

"Don't drink while you walk," March chided, reaching over his daughter's blonde head to coax the cup away from her face.  "You're gonna trip."  
  
" _You're_ the only thing that's tripping me," Holly protested, laughing at the game of snatch-back over the drink as her father paused to sample the cup.  " _Daaad,_ " she drawled again as March planted his entire hand over her face to keep her an arm's distance while he bit another mouthful of shaved ice free.

"Wot," March mumbled around the mouthful of berg, chin up like a pelican.  He relented the cup and straw, hooking his arm around Holly's neck to kiss the top of her head, their step resuming that clumsy amble toward a square of picnic tables - that which sprawled between the Pier and the open dirt field that served as parking overspill.

Jackson Healy, eyes glinting with intelligence behind a halo of cigar smoke, crossed his heavy arms like a gargoyle retiring its granite wings, and returned his attention to the rest of the crowd.  Wearing a dark blue security polo same as the woman beside him, he didn't suppose he'd be recognized, and didn't fancy a conversation with Holland March, his very recent business partner, either about the disparity between their casework and his enforcement rates, nor the sentiment that went behind treating his old lineup of regular clients as if nothing in his career path had changed at all.  Man gets to a certain age, it's hard to make new friends if you didn't like bowling, or golf, or politics; and besides that, Healy was trying to save for retirement and he'd be fucked if he was gonna ask a widower, with a kid to put through college, for a raise.

Which also went into the whole squirming pile of things Healy was not going to discuss with March, because Holly's education or overall welfare wasn't exactly any of Healy's goddamn business.

"Can you stub that thing out?" Griers snapped, shifting her weight.  
  
"I could," Healy amended, turning his chin to vent the next mouthful of smoke away from her, where it swung limp and foggy in the still beachside heat.  "Keeps the bugs off, though, don't it."

"I have some spray for mosquitoes," Griers offers amicably.  "It's in my car."  On cue, she reaches down to slap at a round brown calf.  "Fuck, getting eaten alive."

"Make it quick," Healy offers, arm open and head tilted.  "Pick up that Aspirin you said you needed earlier, too."  
  
"Okay," Griers steps from her post, glancing up at the Ferris Wheel.  "Five minutes, tops.  You want your jacket?"

"Nah. Forecast said it's gonna be a warm one."  Healy cracks his knuckles, scans the crowd again per regulation, watches Griers jog toward the picnic square, the parking lot.  He settles back to his slouch and his cigar, glancing sidelong for the turn of March's beaky profile, Griers providing the line of motion March would follow seeing such unusual haste through the crowd.  Sharp man, Holland March, if not a goofy drunk schmuck getting disco-struck by every pair of painted eyes on rollerskates.  March was smart enough, and that was really all he had to be, and any other good stuff about him wasn't even up for eval, because Jackson Healy could like him on smarts alone and if he liked him for anything more, then it weren't nothing more than anybody else deserved for being, well, likable.  Those painted eyes always looked back, those rollerskates always slowed, and even Healy remembered being the cat of that particular walk (and, in certain neighborhoods, still was), so it weren't, you know, anything more than anyone ever deserved.  Healy was a fair guy, and it'd be unfair to say that March wasn't likable, and that was all there was to that.

March draped an arm over Holly's shoulder and tugged her braid, pointing with that laconic hand toward the Ferris Wheel, grinning under his mustache as Holly's face lit with recognition.  Healy can't remember spotting March spot him, no eye contact even, but March followed his daughter from the picnic table and back up the Pier just the same as if he'd been waved over.  

Healy got his arm open in time to receive the hug, huffing a cloud of cigar smoke past the impact.  "Ooph.  Somebody's full of cotton candy."  And though Holly was as aloof as most fourteen-year-olds, and Jackson Healy was about as friendly as a desert shrub and all the snakes under it, there was a night of blood and triumph between the two that demanded hugging.  
  
"Elephant ears," Holly corrected, detaching to hoist herself to a sit on the wooden rail against which Healy was waiting for his client.  "And chocolate frozen bananas.  Why are you dressed like that?"  
  
"You couldn't get the kid some protein?" Healy shook March's hand with the type of scorn that hovered near sarcasm, ignoring the segue about his here-to-fore secret second (first) job.  "Sugar crash is gonna see her, what, comatose."

March's mouth pulled back sheepishly, but his eyes grinned to match the ribbing.  He threw a lazy tap at the side of Holly's knee. "There's a history of corn-dog misadventure with this one."

Holly's legs kicked out in a lazy swing.  "Yeah when I was like  _ten_ , and you've barfed  _way_ more than I ever have,  _Holland_."

March, "Don't say 'like'.  You weren't 'like' ten, you were ten." He props his fists on his belt and jerks his chin at his daughter to pose a challenge, "We can get burgers on the way home, you want a burger?"  
  
But Healy's eyebrows had come crashing down, humor still warming his voice, "Excuse me, hold on," his broad hand interrupted the air of burger debate between the March family.  To Holly, "What did you just call your father?"

Holly, "Are you working for the fair, or just someone on that ride?"  
  
March, "She called me Holland,  _Jack_."

Healy, in low gruff tones as if impressed, "Hey now, kid, that ain't right.  Is that the 'it' thing, nowadays, to disrespect the parent like that?"

Holly, biting her cheek, "Yeah, kinda.  I've known him my whole life, so we don't have to be so formal, right?"

March, "Doesn't bother me any,"  
  
Healy, "Well it bothers -" twisting on heel, first to regard March and then to regard the smaller lady-March (who was either admiring the fireworks or performing the year's longest eye-roll), "It bothers me."  Healy squares his weight and wags his finger at Holly to get her attention, removing the cigar to exhale over his shoulder.  "He's yer father, notcher friend or your roomate or your landlord or whatever.  Call him what you want in fronta anybody else - Lord knows I've called him worse-"  
  
March, scuffing the boardwalk with his heel in a flail of dipped knees, struck with relief that the abuse was finally getting a light, "S _o much_ worse,"

"But in front of me, you call this guy 'dad', or you don't call him nothin'."  Healy reaffixes his cigar, offers his hand to help Holly down from the fence.  "Capisce?"

Holly's shoulders rise and fall in a silent breath.  "If you say so, Mr. Healy."  She takes Healy's hand, hops down from the fence, then falls sideways to clutch March's arm with an exaggerated groan of defeat.  " _Father_ , I  _do_ believe I shall perish soon from hunger."  
  
Healy's chest jumps in silent laughter, cigar puff escaping.  "Yer a ham," he mumbles, toasting the air with a half-open fist, an applause and a dismissal.

March, addressing the top of Holly's head as she pirouettes under their tangled fingers, "Guess we're retiring for the night."

It's Healy who feels like maybe he ought to be the one wandering on away, but he remembers his post and his job and he shifts his weight and puffs his cigar and crosses his arms and consults the dirt instead, grinning for a heartbeat that could be a wince on anyone else.  "Yeah, I'll see ya at the office."

Holly waves over her shoulder and March gives a nod through the departing banter, but it's another two minutes before Griers is due and Healy watches the duo navigate the crowd, watches them glance back and wave and laugh and shove each other and hold each other up and glance back again, just March this time, stepping on his daughter's heel again, 'scuse-me-sweetie and  _daaad_ through the music and the crowd and the pop of fireworks that neither men had once looked up to notice.


	2. Chapter 2

Jackson Healy's was a stern personality.  He didn't scowl with his frown so much as through the whole rest of his middle-weight (middle-aged) boxing frame, a squaring of shoulders and hips that said 'now, look here, you' the way a cop on t.v. might say it through a lifted chin and a curled fist.  Usually, Healy didn't have to say anything or lift anything, just settle his balance one foot to the next and frame his jaw thoughtfully around his cigarette, eyebrows up like a grandma who didn't appreciate you taking the lord's name in vain, not under her roof, you were raised better than that.  When he did need to speak to a mark he was cordial and fair, if not curt, and even more so disappointed than ever angry.  He'd once broken Holland March's arm with a calm politesse that had greater exampled his New England professionalism than anything nearing condescension or spite or bruiser bluster bullshit.  

He'd even sharpen his grammar by nixing contractions, as in, _don't_ reach for that baseball bat, _don't_ swing that shit at me, _don't_ make this harder on yourself,  _do not_ escalate this fucking situation they _do not_ pay me extra for making sure you stay down.  The politesse was as much a removal of personal bias as it was the kind of high-handed humor people in his line of work traded at the proverbial water-cooler (and then he reached for a weapon, the schmuck, with me there just trynta do my job and this cat thinks it's all right to endanger my physical safety, how's that for a Monday).

This removal lost itself in the moments it was Healy and March, the both of them, cursing over an unexpected corpse, the both of them flinching back with tandem 'whoah' from the pressing heat of an explosion, the both of them flushed with victory, a paycheck, or beers, March pulling corny nerd humor at the waitress as they soothed the month's desk toil and gunshot tinnitus in a crowded downstreet.  Healy's cordial professionalism was dropped for a heartbeat or two, in those moments, and his open-eyed humanity would sympathize with whatever shock or fear or rush or celebration shared by Holland March, and the jinx would be so seamless and accidental that neither noticed until the moments their reactions skewed apart in different directions again and one or the other would wrestle down an inexplicable sense of having been betrayed (which cued the bickering).

Jackson Healy's was a stern personality, while Holland March sailed under the "good cop" flag, the sympathetic listener, the apologist, the deliverer of jokes and breaker of ice and reiterator of questions.  This was a comfortable dynamic for their operation; though Healy found himself comfortable with any (paying) dynamic, really, unswayed from his professional indifference by any such thing as friendship, until the moments he didn't sway so much as crack through from a trap door like a cartoon coyote who would try his best to hover in mid-air ignorance but relent his fate to gravity with that bitter shrug (and serves him right for chasing roadrunners in the first place).

Healy, sat at this tikki-themed bar in this swampy LA night, grunted his not-yet-a-laugh, glancing over at March's sweat-dark shirt collar through the heat of three tequila shots and two beers, broad shoulders jerking harder in a more genuine laugh as March pulled a slight-of-hand trick for the bartender he was trying to impress.  Healy disliked tequila the way a houseguest was allowed to dislike your cat, and the thin client perched between the Nice Guys kept ordering rounds and hell if March's goofy ass could ever hold as much composure under the influence, so, tequila Healy would drink that night, covertly downing every other shot slid March's way (pouring the rest into a fake planter that smelled vaguely like vomit and tire rubber).  Wondering, suspiciously, if the client was trying to get them off their guard somehow, and for what reason.  
  
Twitching his jacket open to catch some air against his ribs, Healy flashed pity at the attractive bartender and interrupted the client's order for another round, turning instead to an open manilla folder on the bartop between them.  "Any one of these, yet?" Healy rapped his knuckles against the bartop, splaying a few photos loose for the bartender to shake her head over.  "No?  Yeah, well.  Thanks anyway for keepin' an eye out."  Healy's accent was rounded New England from his New York origins, quipped Chicago from that time he spent upriver, and something low and dark and Texan sometimes that he more likely gleaned from the spaghetti westerns that had raised him in the early absence of a father (war-hero, dead not dead-beat, and the stepdad to arrive of little consequence until much, much later in Healy's life).  California soaked through his words like ocean salt on the night wind, cold in the back of his throat, slowing the rapid eastcoast delivery. He didn't have to speak loud to be heard, and he never needed to repeat himself.  
  
March's accent was 100% California Jew, and he spoke through his nose at increasing volume to be heard, and repeated himself often and with varying degrees of embellishment.  "Yes, thank you, regardless, anyways."  March waved at the bartender's departure, eyes half-lidded above a drowsy grin and shoulders slumped forward, despite Healy knowing damn well the man wasn't schnockered.  (And there, again, March was smart and likable in the same stride - they had shared a glance about the free drinks and had wordlessly worked toward the same conclusion for an acting deception; and if that wasn't excellent teamwork and perfect fucking communication then Healy would eat his shoe.)

The client, a whip-thin older gentleman, had hired The Nice Guys after municipal failure to uncover the theft drying up his bar's revenue - from the tax books to the very stock room, the place was hemorrhaging money and Samuel Barnes hadn't found any definitive avenues for the disappearance.  Staff had already been completely cycled out, accountants replaced, and now customers themselves were under scrutiny.  Healy figured someone in the man's family was skimming cream from the top, but he and March were going to jump through all the other hoops first, being paid by the day as they were.

Or, rather, being paid by the  _night_ as they were; Samuel Barnes living a full business life managing the bar, a golph course, and a stage production company.  They couldn't hardly meet the man at reasonable hours, and even the hours they managed to log had been spent in the full grip of their client's leisure (to no complaint).

"We're going to need that list of employee history by Wednesday," March reminded Barnes, tapping the marbled bartop with a chewed plastic garnish-skewer.  "See who we can eliminate by the weekend."  
  
"Good lord," Barnes huffed, sitting back and blinking widely.  "I doubt we'll need to  _eliminate_ anybody.  I only want my margins out of red."

March's smile was slow and doubtful, and he clapped Samuel Barnes on the shoulder while Healy scoffed silently into his beer.  "You'll have to set the rules with my associate, here.  He does most of the eliminating."

Healy glanced up from his insobriety, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose as he perused a grayscale photo, clearing his throat to smile tightly at Barnes' evaluating eye.

"Now again, I'm certain I've seen you sometime before, Detective Healy, but Miranda never found your card in the Rolodex," Samuel Barnes implores, offering a fresh beer forward.

Healy takes the beer and shrugs.  "Not exactly qualified for Detective but I've been in town a few years yet doing odd jobs.  Mighta seen the ad."   
  
March has turned on his stool to rest his elbows back against the bar, slouched and relaxed, listening intently even as he scans the Monday night crowd of single retirees and out-of-highschool-not-yet-in-college alcoholics.  "Maybe you broke his arm, Jack."

"Healy, Jack? Ah," Barnes brightens.  "Jackson.  You had less gray in your hair.  Joeseph's man."  
  
"Hey," Healy's grin cracks open through his inebriation.  "Joey.  Wow.  Yeah," he frowns through a chuckle, sipping from the beer, Professional Indifference shoved aside by nostalgia.  "That was a  _long_ time ago, Sam."  
  
"You remember me, then."

Healy shrugs, casually apologetic.  "I've taken a few hits since.  You don't look like the Sam I remember, but I know Joey knew a Sam and a Barnes apiece."

"We met through Dorothy.  Nevertheless, it's good to see you again."  Samuel Barnes toasts Healy's beer and the sound of the shotglass striking the bottlemouth snags at March's attention.  "Thought you'd have been sent up same as the rest in that raid; I was glad to miss your name in the papers."  
  
Healy leaned forward, frown gone pensive.  "I was out of that circuit before then.  Heard it on the news, though, what a shitshow."  
  
March twists around to match Barnes and Healy's conspiratorial postures.  "What are we talking about?"

Barnes, "It's a small world, after all, Detective March.  I used to know your partner here."  
  
"In passing," Healy amends, expression pinching briefly over the exaggeration.

"Oh?" Barnes glances sidelong at Healy.  "Well, yes, as a friend of Dorothy's, and I was fatter then."

Comprehension descends like another tequila shot.  "Saaaamwise," Healy blusters, sitting up and back to let out a belly laugh, beer cradled between both heavy mitts.  "Barnes, not TenTrees.  You got married."  He reaches over to cup the back of Barnes' collar in a friendly shake, beaming eye to eye and pointing at March with his beer.  "Our client here's an old friend.  I remember now."  
  
March had wilted with confusion, suit gone crumpled with poor posture and the night's damp heat.  "You met through Dorothy?"  
  
"Yeah, that," Healy chuckled, waving his beer, slapping Barnes on his narrow back as they both laughed.

"You are  _drunk_ ," Barnes chortles, nudging at Healy's ribs, elbow hitting the smooth leather cuff of his shoulder holster.  "And you have a  _gun_ ohmygod, who let you have one of those -"  Barnes reached into Healy's jacket and drew his handgun, shushing and laughing as Healy tried to stuff his hand under the bar so as to not, quote, scare the shit out of the poor waitstaff.

"Stop fuckin' around," Healy urged, wresting his gun back and tucking his jacket straight, clearing his throat as Barnes bit back his laughter over the silence all three men kept while the bartender bustled past, kids hiding matches from mom.

March scratched an eyebrow with a blunt thumbnail.  "So who was Dor -"

"You have to come see the family," Barnes plead, pulling the beer from Healy's hand.  
  
March widened his eyes at Healy, mouth bitten thin and chin jutting out because  _no_ , the family was the  _last_ on the investigative list and nearly eight-hundred dollars in overdraft said so.  But Healy was already nodding sure-why-not, and March let out a nasal nah-haahhnn, cheeks puffing out in displeasure.

"Detective March," Barnes slid from his stool, a little unsteady in his rolled sleeves and high threadcount slacks.  "I'll send the necessary files with Jack on his return.  You can get along with Yaya here until closing time, yes?"

The words 'not invited' hovered just over March's head, as absurd as if Barnes had just suggested he milk a cactus.  "We're kind of on the clock," he reminded.

"I appreciate your professionalism," Samuel started,

"He's good for it," Healy interrupted, reaching past Barnes to tap March on the side of the arm.  "I'll take a look into who the family might know, who could be getting into the books or stock.  It's all on charge."

Samuel scoffed, eyes glinting as he stepped past Healy to accept his jacket from the bodyguard who had detached from the door as soon as Barnes had stood.  "Never was before, with you," he muttered, eyebrows raised in  _implication_.

March choked on his beer.

Healy spared March a patting hand through the coughing fit, that same reproach to the lift of his eyebrows as he wore whenever else March was being clumsy or reactive or doubtful (things that skewed too far from Healy's sympathy, that pricked him with confusion and bled the disappointed granny back to the top).  "Joe was a friend.  I worked for Joe, so sometimes I worked for Joe's friends too.  I didn't work for _free_ , I just didn't work for other peoples' money."

Barnes leaned in to agree, "Back when friendship was an invaluable currency.  You could even say Jackson worked -" but his smile went crooked and his voice dropped, " _Pro bono_ ," he wheezed, words crumbling into a laugh.

"Would you cut it out, yer gonna kill him," Healy groused, unable to chew the grin from the side of his own mouth.  "March, I'll call you tomorrow.  Try not ta wake Holly when you get in, it's a school night."

"'S, aahhh," March nodded, still coughing in small jerky hiccoughs.  "Have fun," he managed to rasp after the retreating trio, Healy and Barnes and the bodyguard, eyes watered and stomach hollow over how much money they probably just lost.  Healy was a good PI, but that was half the problem - he was a  _good_ PI.  Efficient.  Didn't know how to take it slow, how to get the most for the labor.  By March's guess, Healy would have the thief in the records by the next hour, no muss no fuss.  No overdraft.

March took a cab to the hotel suite which the city had given he and Holly until the municipal was done with the crimescene of their rental - yet again a casualty of the job, where the Nice Guys' first official case had led to the immolation of their photographic evidence, which had tragically trapped the arsonist in his own sabotage, Healy shooting the man to put him out of his misery though March's gun had been drawn with similar intent.  Files tucked under his arm, step careful and quiet and shoeless once he reached the door (having fallen twice in the elevator unlacing his wingtips), he eased into the room to meet all the relief air conditioning could give a drunk head, papers and shoes tumbling to the nearest armchair, sinking to the couch where he slept (eschewing the full-body comfort of mattresses ever since the loss of his wife, a small everyday flagellation).  Only when he pulled the book of matches from his shirt pocket to light a cigarette was he reminded the name of the bar; Caligula.  Cigarette and matches were both slapped unlit to his shirtfront, March crossing his arms behind his head to contemplate the dry white ceiling and, eventually, the inside of his eyelids.

Twenty minutes later March sat bolt-upright with a sharp gasp through his nose.   _Pro bono_ , Barnes had leered, and Healy had scuffed a knuckle against his stubbled jaw to hide the chuckle, however tinged with scorn.  That meant free, but there was also some sort of joke in there, a question which lay at the peripheral of March's consideration, an answer out of reach.  Halfway sinking back to the pillow March jerked upright again.  It felt like he'd just had a rude sign taped to his back and everybody in Mrs. Long-Mendez's debate class had been laughing at him, except he was never so unpopular as to warrant rude notes and nobody in Mrs. Long-Mendez's debate class had ever laughed at him and it would have _destroyed_ him if they ever had because those kids were the only kids he had considered equals and partners and it was maybe like -  
  
March retrieved the cigarette from his lap, parked it in the corner of his mouth and fingered the matchbook as he sank back into the couch.  Caligula... was a batshit crazy Roman Emporer who fucked anything with legs, and even some things without, and had probably at one point or another turned his palace into a brothel.  It wasn't difficult to imagine Healy hanging out with pimps, as their call-girls did better with bruisers to collect owed monies and enforce safety - and he must have been up to some sorta career before that self-defense gig.  March scoffed to himself and retired the cigarette behind his ear, having solved the last of the day's puzzles.  Barnes was _probably_ running prostitution under his legitimate business, and the money was _probably_ disappearing in the under-current, and that was _probably_ why the police hadn't been given the appropriate access to the full details of the crime, and Healy would _probably_   _still_ solve the case by morning so March probably didn't have any goddamn thing left about which to worry.


	3. Chapter 3

"Marsh," Healy's knee hit the couch in another hard nudge, dislodging the frame with a dull carpeted scuff.

"You sound like a Kennedy sometimes, you know that?" Holland March mumbled from under the curve of his elbow, shirtsleeve having press-printed wrinkles against his forehead and cheek over the long morning of out-like-a-beer-log. "Like you think my name is Marshall and you're trynta be all personal, but presidential, like."

"Ma _rtch_ ," Healy corrected, bowing at the waist. "Yer majesty." He used the bow to lift the side of the couch, startling March with the drop. "Wake the fuck up. Our client's dead."

March struggled to a sit, blinking gummily, dark blonde hair flat against one side of his head.  "... Did I leave the door unlocked?"

Healy's mouth slanted, unimpressed.  "I only got the news about it twenty minutes ago. Had to drive over 'cos the front desk told me you put a hold on calls.  The police will need to ask us about last night."  He snapped his fingers and rolled his hands forward at the wrist, urging.  "We need ta get to the scene before the ambulance."

March swung his legs off the edge of the couch and dimpled his eyebrows down at the fact that he was missing a sock.  "The police will need to ask  _you_ about last night.  I wasn't the last of us to see him -" a laborious yawn, unlit cigarette tumbling from his shirt collar to the carpet, "Alive."

"We both need to get to the scene," Healy reached down to lift March upright by his underarm,  "Still on the payroll, you and I, it's just for a different thing now.  His partner doesn't want police, but police will come with the ambulance and it ain't humane askin' Edgar to just keep poor fucking Samwise in the parlor like that."  Healy's hand is warm and flat against the top of March's back, sliding lower so as not to topple him in the firm push toward the suite's bathroom.  "Getcherself fucking presentable, we're helping a friend now."

"A Friend," March echoed, head wobbling as he disappeared behind the bathroom door to slap at the shower tap.  "We don't accept payment in blowjobs, Healy," he called over the noise of the running water.  "Just so that's clear."

* * *

There was a styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee on the dashboard of Healy's car and March whimpered with relief, clutching it carefully between his good hand and the one the cast had left a little pale and thin.  "You  _do_ care," he teased, but fell short on the uptake when Healy didn't protest the theft.  
  
Healy punched the ignition. 

"Sorry about your friend," March hazarded, and took a careful sip because finders keepers. 

"Maintenance heard the gunshot.  I guess he always talked like he never wanted to get old," Healy shrugged.  "But Samwise was too fucking vain to off himself, and especially not in the middle of trying to figure out who was scarping him."

"Maybe you were too close to finding out who was scarping him.  You met the 'family'?"

Healy grunted in agreement, taking a hard left turn and nudging the speed limit.  "You figure out by now that ain't a family in the traditional sense?"

"I'm not that blonde."  March winced over the syrupy texture of the coffee.  He pried the lid off and eyed the milky slosh as it made a lurching stoplight go for his lap.  "This is tea.  You're inhuman."

The smile flickered just under the weight of Healy's grim but subtle display of distress.  "All right, so what kind of non-traditional family do you suppose we're talking here, then?"

"Prostitution," March deduced confidently.  
  
Healy's head jerked back, eyes fixed to the road.  "What."

"Sure.  Joint's named Caligula, Barnes was kinda greasy,"

"Sam wasn't greasy, you're greasy."

March averted his appeal to the car roof.  "Sorry.  That's my guess.  Is it drugs, then?  Porn?  Insurance sales?  Smuggling of endangered freshwater fish?"

"My fish are perfectly local."  Healy sighed, taking a ramp to the highway.  "And you're wrong on alla that.  New rule, you're just there to observe." He reaches across March's bony knee to wrench the glovebox open, digging past a gun and a carton of cigarettes to spill a notepad into March's lap.  "Write any and all of those observations down and just, don't," a waving search for the word, "speak."

 March fingers a flask from the glovebox and slams it shut with his knee, hissing air in through his perpetually stuffed nose the first pull before adding the rum to his 'coffee'.

Healy glances between this and the road.  "Are we clear?"

"Hey man, you told me not to speak."

"To the  _family_.  Speak to me, obviously."

"I'm sorry your friend died,"  March waved the flask, "You're going to do whatever it is you do when you grieve people you might have somehow sorta gotten on with, and I'm not going to take it personal."

"... You know what, you should wait in the car."

"What," March complained, "Exactly what type of 'family' are we talking about, here?  Cisco mob?  What's the news on this, Healy, seriously."

Healy opens his mouth to answer, takes a breath and glares at the road, mouth shutting with a small angry shake of the head.  "You'll wait in the car," he mumbles, and he doesn't have to speak up to be heard. 

* * *

March does not wait in the car.

The desert village lay off the highway, a stout array of apartment buildings and small necessity business, grocery and restaurant and clothing outlet.  The streets were cleaner than most that time of year, the buildings bright with pastel wash and purposeful graffiti, the walkways cobbled instead of paved.  March whistles low, hands in pockets as he ambles after Healy's wounded shuffle through the bright midday heat.

"Act right," Healy warns at the tall wrought-iron gate fronting a grassy alley between an office building and a stucco mini-manse.

March pulls his chin back.  "This, from the guy who introduced himself, to our very first actual client, as 'Go Put A Shirt On And Ask Me Again'."

"Second client," Healy reminds, eyes tightening with memory as they navigate the grassy, uncluttered alley.  "And that one didn't even count.  The case was forefeit."

"She was a performer!"

"I didn't see no fuckin' stage, Holland, I sawr a naked kid in a diner trying to get favors from dumb lunks don't know the worth of their time."

"She was twenty four!"

"Would you pipe down?" Healy hushed the air.  "Windows to peoples' kitchens right above us.  Ruin someone's peacable lunch why don't you."

"Jackson Healy, keeper of siestas, lecturer of strippers, breaker of limbs."

"Ey, I never did _that_ past when I was paid to," Healy argued in a rasp, pressing the end-alley gate carefully open as if the squeak of the hinges would interrupt the unspoken funeral of the dead man they were calling on.  "You gotta stop _revisiting_. 'S not healthy."

"I'm just saying, awful lot of recrimination from a guy whose social approach is nails-for-breakfast until the fifth beer. I'm  _charming_ , so," Mumbling,  "I can act right, _you_ act right.  I can act, right, all right." Chin jerking in mulish challenge out of sight,  "You be right."  March follows Healy's pace down the shaded alley to a villa courtyard - what lay tucked between the glass side of a condominium and the windowless brick wall of a firehouse. The villa itself squatted ten paces fronting the yard in a stucco curl of modern architecture, dark and cool past the open arches of its marble-paved atrium.

Healy pauses at the art-nouveau stained-glass doors, casting one last disparaging measure of Holland March, head to toe; at his dirt-blonde ex-cop haircut, his mustard brown liesure suit, lavender button-down that had been left open at the neck to reveal a small gold chain and nothing so decent like the collar of an undershirt, no, but a tanline; heeled leather dust-boots stitched with the area's mexicano press. "Don't touch anyone," Healy warns rapidly, heading the way into the dimly lit foyer with a resignated roll of the shoulder.

"Any _one_?"

Healy grunts an affirmative, striding ahead despite March's slower step trying to let his eyes adjust to the gloom.  Healy gains five steps into the foyer to a solid oak door with a busted lock, the low murmur of a small crowd gaining volume as they overtake a spartan hallway in which a cowboy stands, smoking a cigarette with shaking brown fingers and hiccoughing plumes of clear distress.

"Olive," Healy greets, low and concillatory.

March's dayblindness fades enough to notice, hey yeah, breasts on that cowboy.  And the chaps reveal a sequin bikini bottom, the vest embroidered with a logo March didn't feel it was polite to read.

Healy embraces the cowboy, who removes her hat to mumble into the hug, and March turns on heel to give them some privacy.  Jackson Healy had friends; the rumored 'friends' that all knew him as Jack.  March flashes an eyebrow of approval once Healy has broken from the reconcilliation to move forward, but Healy just scowls and holds the door open to the next room, reluctant to turn his back on March anywhere near Olive.

March bites down on the urge to introduce himself, nodding instead as he passes, glancing twice at Healy back at the door to ask with his whole face if Healy was even _seeing_ the same thing they were both stepping into, because the main of the house opened into a slope-floored auditorium, stage and all, peopled by quivering feather headresses wracked with quiet gummy sobs, eclectically crowded with plaster figurehead props and racks of costumes, makeup-cluttered vanities and script-stacked office desks lit like dinghies in a dark ocean of burlesque.  Winking sequined leggings and glittering shoulders.  March could not stop glancing back at Healy, if only to see if he was about to go and hug anybody _really_ interesting, and bruised his knee against an unlit desk.

 "Edgar," Healy barked, startling March into a stack of foam boulders.

"Office," three scattered voices replied.

"Marco," March called, expecting a 'Polo', maybe a few laughs,

"Que?" someone to the left of a bare-chested ship's figurehead answered, paintbrush raised.

March waved an apology, "Different fella."

"Cut it out," Healy's annoyance brushed over his shoulders in a familiar bristle, but he was already striding past the only row of seats to a door stage-right, and March kicked into a lope to join him.


	4. Chapter 4

The thin gold lettering on the desk plaque read EDGAR BARNES, behind which sat a swarthy gentleman in rolled sleeves, dark eyes bruised with sleeplessness and grief, combing ringed fingers through his graying feathered hair to compose himself before he stood to shake Healy's hand.  Edgar cleared his throat, nodded as if to speak, but paused on spotting March.  The handshake slowed, and Healy stepped around the desk to pull Edgar's leaner frame into a brief brace, shaking Edgar with a shoulder slap.

"Detective March," Healy introduced, twitching an elbow Holland's way.  It sounded like an apology.  "I'm too close to this case, Ed.  He's gonna getcha squared."

"There's - what case?" Edgar stepped back, took a hard sit into the rolling chair that carried him a few steps further still so he could peer between March (hands in pockets, eyebrows up) and Healy (one foot forward like he's gonna follow). "You find Mnoppe.  You find him.  You do what you do when you find him."

Healy's stare went hard and soft at the same time, iron resolve gone warm.  "I don't do that anymore, Ed. Told Sam the same last night."

March pulled the notepad from his jacket, plucking a pen from the desk.  "Noppay?"

"M-N-O-double P-E," Healy supplied, leaning a hip against the desk to argue Edgar down.  "We don't know the guy was even in the neighborhood, or what motive anybody would have -"

"Which way to the body," March prompted, pen lifted toward the door.

"Stage," Edgar croaked.  "There's a three-wall up right now.  He'll be in the parlor, where we all were last night."

March nodded once, wagging the pen back and forth to illustrate his intent.

Healy nodded back, sitting against the desk and crossing his arms, a brace for the argument bubbling up in wounded spanish from the chair.

March resisted the urge to reach against his own back and check for a rude note as he left the office, taking the curtained backstage stairs by two.  Edgar had looked at him like a circus tiger looks at the stool legs getting shoved in its face - Healy's crowd had probably never been the lawful type, sure, but there had been a venom in Edgar's head-to-toe evaluation undeserved by any civil servant there to catch a murderer, much less one who was on the payroll.

The splatter of gore stained dark along the polished wooden stagefloor before the raw plyboard frame of the open house, and March slowed his stride to better investigate the softly lit surroundings behind their velvet red curtains, the exits and blind spots, the weird geography of backstage and upstage and skeletal steel beam above-stage.  Samuel Barnes was reclined across a loveseat stretched out like someone who had seen their execution coming, not like someone who had been desperately gripping a gun to end it all.

The neat round hole in Barnes' forehead further argued for assault - nobody held a gun to their own head unless it was under the chin or against the temple, and even so,  March bent to one knee to check under all the second-hand prop furniture.  No weapon.

"Call the ambulance," March announced on reentering the office, notes in hand.

Healy was still sitting against the desk, and had been talking in a low voice to Edgar, who now reached for the rotary.

"Here's what I got," March continued quietly, tapping the side of Healy's arm with the notepad.  "You been to the scene already?" 

Healy nodded, accepting the notes and patting himself down for the reading glasses he'd left on the dashboard of his car, which March dutifully handed over from the security of his own jacket.

Edgar's voice droned clinically into the phone, reciting the address.

March took a lean against the front of the desk, talking toward the open office door.  "Nothing you wouldn't have already seen, in the notes.  Dunno why you need me here."

"Yer impartial."

As if he hadn't heard that assurance, March went on, "Other than to gross me out.  Wasn't even a murder weapon, so, whomever killed Barnes left armed.  This place is crowded, the street probably even moreso after all the bars let out.  Someone would have seen something.  You need me to do footwork?" March crossed his arms, confusion thrown over his shoulder.  "Help canvas the neighborhood?"

"I have the weapon," Healy mumbled.  "At least we think it's the weapon.  Definitely been fired, no slugs in the wall opposite so we know Sam didn't do the firing."

"You have the... you can't just remove that from a scene, Healy, the cops will need to get prints from that." March propped his fists on his hips, goatee bristling under the chuff of his frown.

"You wanna get prints," Healy reached into his jacket.  "You get prints."  He hefts his gun at March, who catches with a startle.

Edgar, hanging the phone delicately in its cradle, "I doubt Mnoppe has prints in the system."

"All right," March stands, stops, begins to pace.  "Okay, hang on." The gun clatters to the desk top, from where Healy retrieves it with a slant of reproach to his glare. March runs a hand across his face like he's trying to calm his moustache, a nervous scrape. "Who is the usual suspect, right? When there's someone like Barnes, someone with money? Money that's been disappearing? The spouse, right? You said he was married, right? His wife got an alibi for last night? You run into her, she pickpocket you or somethin'?"

 Healy's expression darkened, but he relented to Edgar's raised hand before an argument could surface.

Edgar Barnes leaned an elbow forward.  "Go on, Detective Marsh."

"March, actually, like the thing that comes after April."

"Before April," Healy corrects, rubbing the back of his neck, eyes closed against annoyance.

"Only if I'm sober," March quips, aiming a finger-gun at Healy and winking on the trigger-pull.

Edgar's laugh cracks through Healy's profane dissent, a single syllable to end the reprimand before it even really begins.  "So," Edgar speaks with the whole of himself, a hand weighing air and a shoulder jerking one way or the other, voice graveled by the lit cigarillo wisping between scarred knuckles, not unlike Healy.  "Why otherwise would Sammy's _espoused_ take his life, hm? He had no money, the stupid thing.  It is, it was and it is, all tied in with his ventures.  Those belong to entire committees; nothing to inherit."  

"It's nearly always the wife, is all." March shrugs.  "But if not her, then it's whomever was stealing from his businesses, who didn't want to get caught."

"And who was that, hm?" Edgar challenges softly.

Healy shrugs, a bulldog woke by a fly.  "We figured the suppliers.  Was gonna check with ATF and work my way down to the trucks if I had to."

March had pulled a cigarette from his jacket and held the book of matches suspended, wrists out in supplication.  "We're not even gonna interview the wife?"

Edgar, ignoring this, "Ah, that would be why our municipality so quickly dismissed us.  Suppliers pull strings, don't they?" A scoffing chuckle.  "Damn.  I was hoping Mnoppe.  We can't afford it if Sammy had made such dire enemies elsewhere; Jackie," he chuckled, nearing exasperation.  "What amount of money was his death worth?  I ask you bring me that number, if you have to hand the culprits over to the police, you at least find me the sum which cost poor Samuel his life."

"Sure, of course," Healy grumbled from behind his toothpick, expression crumpled and weight shifting uneasily.  "If it's supply line theft, trucks losing merch off the back, that sort of deal?  I wouldn't rule out drugs."

March nods, grim, hands curled above the back of his elbows.  "Transportation ring might have gotten unearthed in the search for petty theft.  We'll approach this thing prepared, so uh if I could get that widow's number we can interview her before the cops tip her off -"

"Holland," Jackson grunts.  "Shut up."

"This is the price you pay," Edgar drawls from behind the muffle of his cupped hands, fingers working over tired eyes.  "You and your weakness for blondes."

March's head jerks back, skin rolling a stubbly double chin under his frown as he wags his head in affronted confusion.  Last night's prickle of missing out returns, and the answer lurks just out of reach, a golden thread of intuition lacing through all the other colored yarns, drawing his eye to the gold glint of the name plaque.

Edgar Barnes.

Samuel Barnes, Sammy, you got married.  Not TenTrees.  You've lost weight.

Pro bono, wink nudge eyebrow wag.

Joey was a friend, so Healy worked for Joey, Jackie Boy, Joseph's man.

Not TenTrees, not TenTrees  _anymore,_ you got married.  To Edgar Barnes.

March's revelation was a quiet one.  He straightens from his pout like he'd heard a summons, mouth pursed tight, thoughts racing as he excused himself wordlessly to let Jack and Edgar hash out the report deadlines for this new case.

Chances were good that the regular bluebacks would ferret out the operation just fine, and probably already had half the work done, half the evidence and testimony collected.  People only died when an animal like that was feeling cornered.

Still didn't explain Healy's gun, but one mystery at a time.  March slouched against a decoupage pillar to watch the theater crew he could now clearly identify as Hollywood queer - good health, great teeth, tans and up-dos and shaped sideburns.  Tits out and pants tight, indonesian v-neck tunics and platform sandals.  Somebody had lit a joint, someone else warned an ambulance was coming and everybody should clear the aisles.

Somebody else sobbed harder, louder, the gummy baritone of a queen in hysterics.

March straightened the cuff of his shirt.  Mrs. Long-Mendez's class wasn't laughing at a note taped to Holland March's back; they were staring in horror at a pair of safety scissors lodged between his ribs just above his heart.


End file.
